Monday, July 28, 2014

Race of the Day- Alabama U.S. Senate

There is no other race that I will write about this year that is as much of a foregone conclusion as this one. Simply put, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions will win a fourth term because nobody else in the state decided to run for the job.

Sessions, a high ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and the top Republican on the Budget Committee, will hope to be Chairing one of those groups next year. He is also one of the most vocal opponents of the Obama Administration's policies regarding illegal immigration, a topic that is very much in the news this summer.

The conservative Sessions would have been a lock for reelection in this very Republican state against a nominal Democrat, but the party has been quite decimated on the state level in recent years, and they have not filed any candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sessions did not have to worry about a primary challenge and no Independent has qualified for the ballot either.

Democrats once dominated Senate elections in the Yellowhammer State, but Sessions won a rare Senate victory in 1996 when a longtime Democrat retired. That was the last time Democrats seriously contested a Senate seat in Alabama and the last competitive contest. It may be a while before it happens again.